You do not have to be a veteran to have goose bumps run down your body. Just watch this short video and think. The narrator would roll over in his grave if he knew what our present administration looks like. This is an incredibly great video. Stirs you right down to your toes. I will pass this to all I can as it is one of the best " America Tributes"!! It's from a time when the United States had a President who truly loved his country.

I've never understood the modern-day Republican's desire to masturbate to the mention of Ronald Reagan's name.

His administration was one of the most corrupt in history, with 138 indictments and 29 convictions. He raised taxes seven times. He tripled the national debt while running on a promise to balance the budget. He sold arms to terrorists and he cut and run when a bombing killed 240 Marines in Beirut.

He was, by any reasonable measure, a terrible president, and in 1992, polls showed that 62% of the American public believed just that.

And then Grover Norquist started the Reagan Legacy Project, designed to make us believe that a terrible president was actually Jesus Christ returned...or something.

Norquist can attempt to revise history all he wants. Reagan was awful, and the lunacy that is today's Republican Party is his legacy.

Most polls are worthless, but Gallup is among the worst. Most polls only poll a very small number of people, sometimes as small a sample as 200 to 300. Even larger poll sizes are only a couple of 1000. It's not a lot, and then to extrapolate that X% of US citizens feel/believe "this way" is pretty bogus.

Also the questions are often vague and/or (deliberately) leading to certain answers desired answers. It's not necessarily even that citizens have been so barraged with propaganda that they answer in a certain way. It's more about the questions, themselves, and how they're asked.

So CharlieE, do you choke your chicken at the mention of Jimmy Carter's name?

No, why would I? I didn't vote for him, though his post-presidency work is certainly admirable.

As for Reagan's early 1990s poll numbers, I've seen figures that dramatically differ from the Gallup Poll cited above. At the moment, I can't find them, but I did find this:

From the Washington Post (2/4/11):

It's true that Reagan is popular more than two decades after leaving office. A CNN/Opinion Research poll last month gave him the third-highest approval rating among presidents of the past 50 years, behind John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton. But Reagan's average approval rating during the eight years that he was in office was nothing spectacular - 52.8 percent, according to Gallup. That places the 40th president not just behind Kennedy, Clinton and Dwight Eisenhower, but also Lyndon Johnson and George H.W. Bush, neither of whom are talked up as candidates for Mount Rushmore.

During his presidency, Reagan's popularity had high peaks - after the attempt on his life in 1981, for example - and huge valleys. In 1982, as the national unemployment rate spiked above 10 percent, Reagan's approval rating fell to 35 percent. At the height of the Iran-Contra scandal, nearly one-third of Americans wanted him to resign.

In the early 1990s, shortly after Reagan left office, several polls found even the much-maligned Jimmy Carter to be more popular. Only since Reagan's 1994 disclosure that he had Alzheimer's disease - along with lobbying efforts by conservatives, such as Grover Norquist's Ronald Reagan Legacy Project, which pushed to rename Washington's National Airport for the president - has his popularity steadily climbed.

And then there's this, which points out that in the early 1990s, the public thought more of Jimmy Carter than they did of Reagan:

Contrary to conventional wisdom or Hannity wisdom (I bet those two words have never been used together), if you believe approval ratings are a measure of popularity, Reagan's time in office was slightly unliked when measured against his peers.

According to Gallup presidential approval data, Reagan ranks slightly below the 13 president average which goes back to 1937 and FDR: Reagan - 52.8 percent vs the average of 54 percent.

In fact, of the 13 presidents he comes in seventh - six ahead and six behind. Preceding and following presidents beat him. He was walloped by FDR (15 points) and Kennedy (18 points) and Bush 41 creamed him, also (9 points). The republican whipping boy, Bill Clinton, even beat him by 3 points.

Yet another Reagan myth has been debunked. His approval was slightly below average. He happened to time his second election well, when his approval rating was higher than his average and against a bad candidate (Fritz Mondale would have been a great president but was the wrong man at the wrong time). Mondale ran on raising taxes and had a women on the ticket when the American cavemen were not quite standing fully erect. Richard Nixon absolutely crushed George McGovern in 1972: 61 to 38 percent. He is not remembered for that moment in time but for his entire term. The same cannot be said for Reagan.

Although Reagan had about two years of high approval, Reagan - the "enormously popular president" - is revisionist history dreamed-up by Faux News and Rush Limbaugh. Back in the eighties, there were never lines at Blockbuster video stores to rent "Bedtime For Bonzo"' - a Reagan B-movie. By 1987, he bottomed out at 43 percent and bounced along until a spike in his final months. G.W. Bush had a peak of 90 percent so should we call him the most approved president of all time? Granted, even smart liberals were hypnotized by the message of his popularity, which lasted a short time. The actor narrowly dodged impeachment due to Iran/Contra.

It is hardly surprising that the myth of his high approval ranking is conventional wisdom. For nearly a decade, the right wing propaganda machine spewed crap without opposition. It was not until the early 2000's when Phil Donahue stood strong (he was fired shortly after) against the bullshit regarding the Iraq war. No serious voice emerged to counter the revisionist history - including the myth of Reagan's immense popularity - until the great Keith Olbermann bravely and brilliantly took them on (it is still amazing to think he had his own show for years).

Reagan was adored by the right and loathed by the left but the media, as it always does, panders to the mean-spirited conservatives, thus allowing for a myriad of myths about the Gipper. In fact, this week's Time Magazine cover story, written by Joe Scarborough, is yet another puff piece designed to keep the Reagan myth alive.

By no means was Reagan an unpopular president. He enjoyed impassioned popularity by republicans and for a short while he held many independents. But the truth: his below average approval rating indicates he was viewed as just another president when the whole population is considered. Of course he looks better when we just consider the views of the right wingers.

His overwhelming popularity and subsequent approval is myth. This belief is a testimonial to the power of suggestion and repetitive propaganda. Reagan's approval rating is a few points higher than Obama's but we are told constantly how disliked Obama is and how Reagan was a deity.

Mt. Rushmore is safe for now as Reagan will never be on it (at least not until Bill Clinton's mug is finished). You cannot make this stuff up.

I could find the other data, given enough time, but life is too damned short and my detractors don't give a shit, anyway.

Anon...er..Mike/Barky...SMH. How the hell should I know if he REALLY loves da' USA? If he swore on a stack of Bibles that he REALLY loved America, the Conservatives would say he's lying and it should have been on a stack of Korans. How do you really know if he does or doesn't? How do the ignorant Fox News watching fucks who believe this sort of shit know? You don't and they don't so piss off.

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